Gettysburg's Missing Monument

September 26, 1993

You can search the entire Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, Pa., just north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and find not a single monument to the 3,500 men and boys from Maryland who fought in that storied three-day struggle. Now, 130 years after the battle, there is momentum to give these Marylanders a proper memorial.

Citizens for a Maryland Monument at Gettysburg has commissioned a nine-foot-high bronze statue of two wounded Marylanders from opposing sides helping one another off the bloody battlefield. The pedestal will be a 30-ton piece of polished granite from Port Deposit and will face Culp's Hill, where Maryland Union forces fought Maryland Confederate forces in a classic brother-against-brother confrontation.

But the group is $63,000 short of the $160,000 to finish the sculpting in time for the projected October 1994 unveiling. Gov. William Donald Schaefer has promised to help solicit funds from corporations and foundations, but donations from individuals are needed, too. James Holechek, a retired Baltimore advertising executive who is spearheading this effort, says time is short because sculptor Lawrence M. Ludtke of Houston soon must turn his model into a full-scale rendering.

"I have tried to show, through the dependent attitude of both men on the other, the symbolism of the eventual healing of wounds caused by the waging of war of Americans upon their brothers," Mr. Ludtke wrote of his model.

Some 520 Marylanders died at Gettysburg -- 350 (out of 1,200 Marylanders) on the Confederate side and 170 (out of 2,300) on the Union side. A state statue should honor all of these men and boys who fought during those three days in July 1863.